Growing evidence implicates the gut microbiome as a factor in the pathogenesis of a number of disease processes, including inflammatory bowel diseases, atherosclerosis, obesity, diabetes, and colon cancer. The association of these disease processes with an altered microbial community structure suggests that interventions that restore the normal resilient gut microbial community might be an innovative intervention for the treatment of Clostridium difficile colitis, hyperammonemia associated with inborn errors of metabolism, and inflammatory bowel disease.
Hyperammonemia occurs in many inherited metabolic diseases, most prominently in urea cycle disorders, where there is a failure to detoxify ammonia to urea. Current treatment includes a low-protein diet and drugs that relieve hyperammonemia, but these approaches are only partially effective in preventing/treating the devastating neurologic consequences caused by elevated levels of circulating ammonia. A significant amount of body ammonia forms in the gut from the hydrolysis of urea by intestinal bacteria. Oral antibiotic treatment may attenuate hyperammonemia, but the effectiveness of antibiotics wanes over time due to the development of antibiotic resistance.
There is a need in the art for novel methods of treating a subject having a disease associated with an undesirable gut microbiome. There is a further need in the art for novel methods of restoring normal gut flora in a subject or altering the gut microbiota associated with disease to alleviate symptoms caused by the disease. The present invention addresses these needs.